# Cautionary Tales Presents: Warfare, The Life of Anne Frank

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 14 Oct 2022, 41 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/76599e39-ff4b-41d8-8beb-af2d00dbe52e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

This week, it's an episode from Warfare, a podcast from our friends at History Hit. It's 1942. The year Anne Frank and her family went into hiding during the Second World War. It was there that Anne began keeping a diary that would become one of the most recognisable testimonies of the Jewish war-time experiences. But what do we know of her life before the war? Host James Rogers explores the Franks' lives before the outbreak of war, and why this story is still so relevant today. You can find more from Warfare at https://podfollow.com/the-world-wars. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin either listeners. Tim Harford here caution Tales will be
[0:21] Speaker 1: back next week, but in the meantime, we're sharing an
[0:24] Speaker 1: episode from the Warfare podcast, a show from history hit.
[0:28] Speaker 1: I'm a regular listener to Warfare if you haven't listened before.
[0:31] Speaker 1: It's hosted by James Rogers. James is a war historian
[0:35] Speaker 1: who works with the UN, NATO and governments around the world.
[0:38] Speaker 1: The show sometimes explores the defining wars of history, such
[0:42] Speaker 1: as the First and Second World War. Other episodes provide
[0:45] Speaker 1: context to ongoing conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine,
[0:49] Speaker 1: or even how it's related to China and Taiwan. The
[0:52] Speaker 1: episode You're about to hear isn't about some epic battle
[0:56] Speaker 1: or spectacular military blunder. It's about Anne Frank eighty years ago.
[1:01] Speaker 1: In nineteen forty two, Anne and her family went into
[1:04] Speaker 1: hiding during the Second World War, trying to avoid persecution
[1:08] Speaker 1: and death in Nazi occupied Amsterdam. And at this time,
[1:13] Speaker 1: Anne began keeping a diary that she called Kitty, a
[1:16] Speaker 1: diary that became one of the most recognized testimonies of
[1:19] Speaker 1: the Jewish wartime experience. But Anne's story doesn't begin in
[1:23] Speaker 1: nineteen forty two. In this episode, James explores the life
[1:27] Speaker 1: of the Franks before the war and why their story
[1:31] Speaker 1: is still so relevant today. I hope you find this
[1:34] Speaker 1: Warfare episode from our friends at History Hit as moving
[1:38] Speaker 1: and as important as I did. You can hear more
[1:40] Speaker 1: from Warfare wherever you get your podcasts. I'm James Rogers,
[1:46] Speaker 1: and on today's Warfare podcast, re mark the eightieth anniversary
[1:49] Speaker 1: of that fateful day on July sixth, nineteen forty two,
[1:52] Speaker 1: when Anne and her family went into hiding by finding
[1:56] Speaker 1: out about the people who hid the Franks and another
[1:59] Speaker 1: family who lived alongside them. To help with this, we
[2:02] Speaker 1: have doctor Gertruand Brooke, who has been the senior historical
[2:06] Speaker 1: researcher at the now preserved Anne Frank House in Amsterdam
[2:09] Speaker 1: for over fifteen years. He joins us to explain the
[2:12] Speaker 1: fates of those involved and to reveal the real reason
[2:15] Speaker 1: why Anne and her family were eventually found by the Nazis.
[2:27] Speaker 1: Hi Goon, Welcome to the Warfare Podcast. How are you
[2:30] Speaker 1: doing today? I'm fine, Thank you, good to hear what.
[2:33] Speaker 1: It is great to have you on the podcast, especially
[2:37] Speaker 1: at this important time of the year because this July
[2:40] Speaker 1: marks eighty years since Anne Frank and her family went
[2:44] Speaker 1: into hiding in Nazi occupied Amsterdam, and of course we
[2:48] Speaker 1: can all still visit that house today. The Anne Frank
[2:52] Speaker 1: House located just outside downtown Amsterdam. I've been there myself,
[2:56] Speaker 1: and I'm always struck by the somber silence of all
[3:01] Speaker 1: of those who are walking around the building, going through
[3:04] Speaker 1: into each different room, up into the lost back down
[3:08] Speaker 1: and the exhibition space. It truly is a sobering and
[3:13] Speaker 1: educational experience. And I suppose that sums up a bit
[3:16] Speaker 1: more of what the Ann Frank House is because it's
[3:19] Speaker 1: not just a museum, is it. It's not just a museum.
[3:22] Speaker 1: It's also considered to be a place of remembrance, and
[3:26] Speaker 1: most of the visiting people they dig that up. I
[3:29] Speaker 1: think they notice that. So yes, it's a place that
[3:33] Speaker 1: a lot of people are impressed by visiting, just when
[3:36] Speaker 1: you walk around and you are pondering and thinking over
[3:39] Speaker 1: what just happened there in those years. Absolutely, and it
[3:44] Speaker 1: is a museum, it is a space where you can
[3:47] Speaker 1: also learn a lot about this history, where talks can
[3:50] Speaker 1: take place, where exhibitions can take place, but there's also
[3:53] Speaker 1: research going on within the organization, and you're part of that,
[3:57] Speaker 1: aren't you. Yes, that's right. For a long time the
[4:01] Speaker 1: mission of the Anna Frank House was mainly educational and
[4:05] Speaker 1: that is still an important part of it. But since
[4:08] Speaker 1: I think about fifteen years, fifteen to twenty years, the
[4:12] Speaker 1: idea has grown that it's good for us as an organization,
[4:17] Speaker 1: as an educational organization, also as a museum, and also
[4:21] Speaker 1: as a center of knowledge, as we are supposed to
[4:24] Speaker 1: know things about the life of Unfrank and the people
[4:27] Speaker 1: around her. So the idea of forming our own body
[4:31] Speaker 1: of knowledge rather than rely on what other people do
[4:35] Speaker 1: and think that's important. So the head of collections at
[4:39] Speaker 1: that time got the idea to have a research department
[4:43] Speaker 1: as well, and she managed to get at a float
[4:46] Speaker 1: and that was about that time that I came in.
[4:49] Speaker 1: I was working there in another capacity, but I am
[4:52] Speaker 1: a researcher and I'm a historian, so I was taken
[4:55] Speaker 1: on board to actually perform the research, not on my own,
[4:59] Speaker 1: but most of the past fifteen years, I think the
[5:03] Speaker 1: main part of the research that's been done, but there
[5:06] Speaker 1: are others as well. And what sort of things we
[5:08] Speaker 1: rea searching? What were you diving into? Well, that's mainly
[5:12] Speaker 1: every aspect of the life. But what we consider fourteen
[5:16] Speaker 1: what we call protagonists main figures, and that's unfrank and
[5:20] Speaker 1: her family and the other four people that have been
[5:22] Speaker 1: hiding with them in that building. So there's another family
[5:26] Speaker 1: and the dentist Fritz Pfort on his own, and then
[5:29] Speaker 1: there's six people that try to help them. They were
[5:31] Speaker 1: in other secret and they were trying to provide them
[5:33] Speaker 1: with food and protection and help them. So that's fourteen people,
[5:37] Speaker 1: and well we actually delve into their life stories. Where
[5:41] Speaker 1: did they come from, what did they do before, what
[5:43] Speaker 1: they do after, and how when that? That is the
[5:45] Speaker 1: main question. I think, how did all these lives evolve
[5:49] Speaker 1: and go on that made them all come together at
[5:53] Speaker 1: one point in nineteen fourty two in that building and
[5:56] Speaker 1: doing what they did there at the time. And then
[5:59] Speaker 1: there's also history of the corporations, the companies that were
[6:03] Speaker 1: running in the building where those people worked. For the
[6:07] Speaker 1: Diary of Under Frankie itself, how did it develop? How
[6:10] Speaker 1: did you write it? What does she write about? Because
[6:14] Speaker 1: I suppose most people do know that the book that
[6:17] Speaker 1: you buy in the bookstore is in fact is based
[6:20] Speaker 1: on an immense pile of paper as a manuscript. Various
[6:24] Speaker 1: versions also even some short stories and novels. This girl
[6:28] Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer, but she also wanted to
[6:30] Speaker 1: be a journalist, and in a lot of her approaches
[6:32] Speaker 1: and the things that she write about himself and about
[6:35] Speaker 1: her experiences, you see a journalistic or at least the
[6:39] Speaker 1: proto journalistic approach at the least. And so we also
[6:43] Speaker 1: research into all that. When she mentioned someone the men
[6:46] Speaker 1: around the corner of the lady next door, who does
[6:49] Speaker 1: she mean? Who is that? What is their role? What
[6:51] Speaker 1: is that part in the complete picture of the life story?
[6:55] Speaker 1: And the general idea got it all short? Is that
[6:58] Speaker 1: insights The knowledge that we get from that offer us
[7:02] Speaker 1: basically a window and outlook not on particular her life
[7:06] Speaker 1: and her diary, but of the time that she was
[7:08] Speaker 1: living in and what was happening to her, what was
[7:10] Speaker 1: happening around her. Well, let's draw on your research. You
[7:13] Speaker 1: do exactly that, because, like you rightly say, Anne Frank's
[7:17] Speaker 1: story did not start in July nineteen forty two, when
[7:20] Speaker 1: her family went into hiding or when she started writing
[7:23] Speaker 1: her diary. Instead, it goes back much further than that.
[7:25] Speaker 1: Because the Frank family, although mostly associated with Amsterdam today,
[7:29] Speaker 1: they were of course Germans, So take us through that history.
[7:34] Speaker 1: What were the Frank family doing before they arrived in
[7:37] Speaker 1: the Netherlands and how did they get there. Frank's father,
[7:41] Speaker 1: he was from a family that'd been living in frankfort
[7:47] Speaker 1: a mind quite some time. And chiefly his father worked
[7:52] Speaker 1: his way up from just a businessman, so to speak,
[7:55] Speaker 1: and he became part of the affluent society. Would the
[7:58] Speaker 1: family shifted into affluence, you can say. He was a
[8:02] Speaker 1: banker and successful at that, but the family business was
[8:06] Speaker 1: hit pretty hard by the Great War, so investing in
[8:10] Speaker 1: war bonds, and well, German war bonds were the best
[8:13] Speaker 1: of investment after nineteen eighteen, so they gave me too
[8:16] Speaker 1: a bit of trouble there, and nineteen twenty nine hit
[8:19] Speaker 1: them hard as well. So I'm going with a bit quickly,
[8:23] Speaker 1: I think. But so around nineteen thirty a lot of
[8:27] Speaker 1: refluence was dwindling, and of course political developments in Germany
[8:31] Speaker 1: at the time didn't make it much better. So gradually
[8:34] Speaker 1: around the early nineteen thirties, and expediated by nineteen thirty
[8:39] Speaker 1: three the rise to power of Hitler and this National
[8:41] Speaker 1: Socialist Party. Although the sister and the brothers of Otto Frank,
[8:46] Speaker 1: they all left the country and his mother too. So
[8:48] Speaker 1: Otto Frank and his two brothers they'd been fighting in
[8:51] Speaker 1: the German army in fourteen eighteen years and his two
[8:56] Speaker 1: brothers preferred to live in the capital cities of the
[8:58] Speaker 1: former enemies at Paris in London rather than staying in Germany.
[9:02] Speaker 1: That I think it says a few things about the
[9:04] Speaker 1: atmosphere there at the time. Otto Frank's had a chance
[9:08] Speaker 1: to come to Amster. I'm after always neutral Netherlands. Yeah,
[9:13] Speaker 1: the business opportunity there, so that was his choice. They
[9:16] Speaker 1: moved to the Netherlands in nineteen thirty three. At that time,
[9:19] Speaker 1: for a businessman, which means and a solid business plan,
[9:23] Speaker 1: settling there wasn't really very hard. So later in the
[9:27] Speaker 1: thirties the Netherlands became very strict on the immigration because
[9:31] Speaker 1: a lot of refugees came from Us to be a
[9:33] Speaker 1: later and from Germany. But they were lucky to be
[9:36] Speaker 1: so early. So they lived in the Netherlands and I'm
[9:39] Speaker 1: done in a relatively well to do area. I think,
[9:42] Speaker 1: a friendly area with a lot of other Germans, but
[9:44] Speaker 1: also Spanish, Hungarians, Dutch, all sorts of people from upper
[9:48] Speaker 1: middle class. I guess you see that's really interesting to
[9:51] Speaker 1: know because that means that you know, this wasn't a
[9:54] Speaker 1: last minute decision to flee Germany. It wasn't kind of
[9:58] Speaker 1: putting the Frank family into a brand new situation where
[10:01] Speaker 1: they knew absolutely nobody around. Instead, they've been there almost
[10:05] Speaker 1: a decade by the time that they had to go
[10:08] Speaker 1: into hiding, which must have most definitely helped in trying
[10:12] Speaker 1: to create a situation which well they could try and
[10:16] Speaker 1: be kept secret, be kept safe for as long as possible. Yes,
[10:20] Speaker 1: in general, you can say that people at the time Jews,
[10:23] Speaker 1: but there were other groups they were forced to hide
[10:25] Speaker 1: as well, but for other reasons obviously. And if you
[10:28] Speaker 1: want to go and hide, the best thing you can do,
[10:29] Speaker 1: and what the most people did that is rely on
[10:32] Speaker 1: pre existing networks, on business associations, family relations, friendships, and
[10:37] Speaker 1: that's exactly what they did too. Otto Frank had been
[10:40] Speaker 1: working in the Netherlands, as you say, over eight years,
[10:43] Speaker 1: so he had his networks. He had a business, although
[10:46] Speaker 1: he had to fagate that then after the occupation of
[10:49] Speaker 1: the Netherlands, but he had loyal business associates that he
[10:52] Speaker 1: worked with and loyal staff. So how did the situation
[10:56] Speaker 1: in Netherlands change over that almost decade period, and when
[11:00] Speaker 1: did Otto Frank realize that the family would have to
[11:04] Speaker 1: now go into hiding. Well, basically, you can't say that
[11:07] Speaker 1: people leaving. Let's stick two Jewish Germans they'd had to leave.
[11:11] Speaker 1: It's obviously you have to leave Germany because there's much
[11:13] Speaker 1: of a future there. There was over time that shifted,
[11:16] Speaker 1: but in the early ninety twenties for a lot of
[11:18] Speaker 1: people that was obvious and things only deteriorated afterwards. So
[11:23] Speaker 1: what can you do. You can try and migrate. You
[11:26] Speaker 1: can move to another country and find safety there. A
[11:29] Speaker 1: lot of people thought, well that other country better be
[11:31] Speaker 1: on the other side of the ocean, but that was
[11:34] Speaker 1: always difficult. The United States didn't have a refugee policy,
[11:38] Speaker 1: they had an immigration policy. So if you want to
[11:40] Speaker 1: go and emigrate, you've got to jump a lot of hurdles,
[11:42] Speaker 1: and you've got to make sure that you don't become
[11:44] Speaker 1: a liability to public means over there. So it's not
[11:48] Speaker 1: that easy. And I think most of the people that
[11:52] Speaker 1: I come across in my research German Jews living in
[11:55] Speaker 1: the Netherlands. You can always find traces of documents or
[11:58] Speaker 1: that they tried to go to the US, and some
[12:00] Speaker 1: of them could, some of them couldn't. And Otto Frank
[12:04] Speaker 1: and his family tried that as well. There is a
[12:06] Speaker 1: document that he says in nineteen thirty eight, I applied
[12:09] Speaker 1: for immigration to the US of at nineteen thirty eight.
[12:12] Speaker 1: That's a dramatic year because we don't know when in
[12:15] Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, So earlier in nineteen thirty eight you'd
[12:19] Speaker 1: be on a waiting list with perhaps twenty twenty five
[12:22] Speaker 1: thousand others, which is quite a lot. But later in
[12:25] Speaker 1: the year, after the unshows of Austria. In Nazi Germany,
[12:28] Speaker 1: it had particular in November after the pogroms what we
[12:32] Speaker 1: call the christal Nacht, the number of applicants for the
[12:35] Speaker 1: US skyrocketed up to three hundred and fifty thousand or so,
[12:39] Speaker 1: where the US would only allow a bit over twenty
[12:42] Speaker 1: thousand German born immigrants every year. So you see you
[12:46] Speaker 1: waiting list of ten years. Immigration is not an option.
[12:49] Speaker 1: Some people try to naturalize to another nationality into another country.
[12:54] Speaker 1: That didn't help in the end either. But for a
[12:56] Speaker 1: lot of people in nineteen forty two, they've been trying
[12:59] Speaker 1: quite a few things to get the safety and then
[13:02] Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two, in the summer, the choice was
[13:05] Speaker 1: we report ourselves in for a transit camp and then
[13:08] Speaker 1: we've got to send off to labor. There was the
[13:10] Speaker 1: idea at the time, although there was the pretext, or
[13:13] Speaker 1: we go and hide. And it's good to consider that
[13:16] Speaker 1: in the Netherlands in the summer of nineteen forty two,
[13:19] Speaker 1: almost everyone thought this thing is going to be over
[13:22] Speaker 1: in what six, eight, ten months, a year, perhaps because
[13:25] Speaker 1: the Americans will come, the British will come, and all
[13:29] Speaker 1: the Allies will come and we're going to sort out
[13:32] Speaker 1: these Germans. And there was a mistake, but that was
[13:35] Speaker 1: the idea. Can we go hide and sit it out,
[13:37] Speaker 1: or should we report in? So the plan here then
[13:41] Speaker 1: was when it was realized that they would have to
[13:44] Speaker 1: go into hiding, the thoughts were perhaps that they only
[13:47] Speaker 1: have to be there for a matter of months until
[13:50] Speaker 1: the Allied liberation. Yes, the general assumption in analysts. You
[13:54] Speaker 1: can read that in a lot of documents, in a
[13:56] Speaker 1: lot of recollections of people at that time. Everyone thought
[14:00] Speaker 1: nineteen forty two was already pretty long and that this
[14:03] Speaker 1: can't last much longer. So over optimistic perhaps, or perhaps
[14:07] Speaker 1: there was really the thought of that day. That's hard
[14:09] Speaker 1: to judge, but in general people would think, well, if
[14:13] Speaker 1: it's going to be for a year or so, we're
[14:15] Speaker 1: going to do that, we can see that out. But
[14:17] Speaker 1: it went on for a lot longer than that, and
[14:19] Speaker 1: a number of risked their lives to offer the Franks sentuary.
[14:25] Speaker 1: So one of the things that isn't often looked into
[14:27] Speaker 1: as much is who these helpers were. Could you give
[14:30] Speaker 1: us an idea of the people who did help provide
[14:32] Speaker 1: the Franks sentry. Yes, four of them were office staff
[14:36] Speaker 1: off the companies. There were two companies in the building.
[14:40] Speaker 1: One is that most people know that opect that's really
[14:43] Speaker 1: a small product. It's a jelling agent for homemaking gem
[14:46] Speaker 1: home cooking of jam and so that for a couple
[14:50] Speaker 1: of years there was the cork on which Frank and
[14:53] Speaker 1: his family were afloat. But it wasn't really much of
[14:56] Speaker 1: a business. So they needed more turn all for more
[14:59] Speaker 1: to turnouts to keep themselves alive, and with a couple
[15:02] Speaker 1: of business associates, he founded a business that traded in
[15:06] Speaker 1: ingredients for the food industry, so that spices from Asia
[15:10] Speaker 1: to colonial products, basically cinema and nutmeag that sort of stuff,
[15:15] Speaker 1: but also preservants and colorants and odorants and all sorts
[15:18] Speaker 1: of surrogates. And that's where mister van Pels from the
[15:21] Speaker 1: other family and hiding comes in because Otto Frank knew
[15:24] Speaker 1: a few things about marketing and business, and Herman van
[15:28] Speaker 1: Pell's he knew the trade, he knew the product. In Germany,
[15:31] Speaker 1: he had a business of his own for years in
[15:33] Speaker 1: the same sort of product, so he was the expert
[15:36] Speaker 1: in that respect. So four people from the office staff
[15:39] Speaker 1: and one man in the warehouse. That's a bit of
[15:42] Speaker 1: a dramatic thing as well. It was the father of
[15:45] Speaker 1: one of the office workers was a warehouseman downstairs on
[15:48] Speaker 1: the ground floor, and he was in on the secret too.
[15:50] Speaker 1: He was the eyes and ears on the ground basically.
[15:53] Speaker 1: And he's also the one that built a famous bookcase
[15:56] Speaker 1: that the camouflaged the door into the hiding place. So
[15:59] Speaker 1: he provided a lot of safety guiding the front door
[16:02] Speaker 1: and such. But he fell, oh, he seriously ill. He
[16:05] Speaker 1: had stomach cancer. He had to leave his job. So
[16:09] Speaker 1: was another man down there. He wasn't in on the secret,
[16:11] Speaker 1: and of course they were not going to tell him
[16:12] Speaker 1: because you don't know what kind of risk you run.
[16:14] Speaker 1: If you tell a total stranger. So that's when the
[16:17] Speaker 1: sense of security sort of started to wane a little bit.
[16:20] Speaker 1: But on the first floor, on the office floor, four
[16:23] Speaker 1: office workers and the husband of one of them, the
[16:25] Speaker 1: husband of Mepris. He was a civil servant. He worked
[16:28] Speaker 1: in the civil service of the city, and he also
[16:30] Speaker 1: had a position as a commissioner sort of supervisor of
[16:34] Speaker 1: the board of the business in the building. So you see,
[16:37] Speaker 1: there is an office building with a company, a serious
[16:40] Speaker 1: company running there where the management basically is hiding and
[16:44] Speaker 1: is out of sight. No one knows they're there, and
[16:46] Speaker 1: it's the staff that's trying to keep things afloat and running.
[16:50] Speaker 1: And there's a mutual dependence there as well, because the
[16:54] Speaker 1: people behind the bookcase would secretly do work administrative work
[16:57] Speaker 1: or packing goods and all sorts of thing to lower
[17:00] Speaker 1: the expenses of the business. The business was the livelihood
[17:03] Speaker 1: of the staff, and it was the life insurance for
[17:07] Speaker 1: the people in hiding there, because if the building was rented,
[17:09] Speaker 1: if the business should failed to vacate the building and
[17:11] Speaker 1: they would leave their hiding place. So there's a mutual
[17:14] Speaker 1: dependence between the corporations and the staff and the people
[17:18] Speaker 1: hiding on the other side. So you mentioned there was
[17:21] Speaker 1: four people in the office and then one person in
[17:23] Speaker 1: the warehouse who sadly is taken ill and so reduces
[17:27] Speaker 1: that capacity to try and help the Frank family. But
[17:29] Speaker 1: you also mentioned that there is two families that are
[17:32] Speaker 1: in hiding, So overall, how many people are being hidden
[17:36] Speaker 1: in this office building? Aftergether there were eight. There's the
[17:39] Speaker 1: Frank family, father and moderate, two daughters, and then there's
[17:43] Speaker 1: the business associate the experts belts that I just mentioned,
[17:46] Speaker 1: who knew about the trade, who knew about the goods,
[17:48] Speaker 1: about the commodities, with his wife and son, so that
[17:51] Speaker 1: seven they were there since July forty two, and then
[17:55] Speaker 1: in November they took in an eighth man. There was
[17:58] Speaker 1: a dentist, Fritz Peffer. The tragedy would fitz peffor that
[18:02] Speaker 1: is that he wanted to marry a non Jewish woman
[18:06] Speaker 1: in Germany, but he wasn't allowed because of the Nuremberg
[18:09] Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five laws, and he moved with her to Amsterdam,
[18:13] Speaker 1: and she always passed as his legal spouse in their
[18:17] Speaker 1: social surroundings. So basically everyone thought, well, he's well off,
[18:22] Speaker 1: he's in a mixed marriage. He's not in trouble as
[18:24] Speaker 1: we are. So when the Frank family and Bells were hiding,
[18:28] Speaker 1: they who knew him were hiding in their annex in
[18:31] Speaker 1: their company building. Then they heard that Fitzpefford was in
[18:34] Speaker 1: trouble too, and that's how they learned that his marriage
[18:37] Speaker 1: wasn't an actually official marriage, So that is a tragic
[18:40] Speaker 1: circumstance as well. But then they took him in they
[18:44] Speaker 1: saw fit to have an eight person there in the building.
[18:47] Speaker 1: He could also, I suppose, help share expenses, I see.
[18:50] Speaker 1: So there was a kind of humanitarian decision here to
[18:53] Speaker 1: just try and help someone in need, but there was
[18:56] Speaker 1: also a practical side to this as a mean to
[18:58] Speaker 1: try and help cover the cost of what is now
[19:01] Speaker 1: a growing expense. At the time that the war is
[19:04] Speaker 1: also getting pretty tense, pretty severe heightened in terms of
[19:09] Speaker 1: the amount of violence as being perpetrated across the continent
[19:13] Speaker 1: and the amount of pressure that is being put on
[19:15] Speaker 1: the Nazi forces. So it's even harder to get food,
[19:19] Speaker 1: for example, and so all of this must combine together
[19:22] Speaker 1: to make as we move through nineteen fifty three and
[19:25] Speaker 1: into nineteen fifty four are really really difficult period. It's
[19:30] Speaker 1: also must have been incredibly, incredibly difficult on the mental
[19:34] Speaker 1: state of those who were in hiding. Now you mentioned
[19:37] Speaker 1: about the adults who are helping with the business and
[19:41] Speaker 1: cover some of the extra labor there, But what about
[19:44] Speaker 1: the kids, What about people like Anne? What were they
[19:46] Speaker 1: doing in their spare time, learning and reading? That's the
[19:49] Speaker 1: work for its words to come to mind, but just
[19:52] Speaker 1: to be precise, also they did some of the work,
[19:55] Speaker 1: just becking goods and light administrative jobs. But mainly the
[20:00] Speaker 1: idea was because they were optimistic and they thought there
[20:03] Speaker 1: were was going to come and end to debt and
[20:05] Speaker 1: they'd be back in school one day. So they get
[20:08] Speaker 1: up with their school. They try to learn history, languages
[20:12] Speaker 1: and do a lot of reading against getting bored. Of
[20:15] Speaker 1: course they're hanging about and doing nothing and sit that
[20:18] Speaker 1: day after day. That's my destroying But so reading and
[20:21] Speaker 1: giving themselves occupied for the children, basically keep up with schoolwork.
[20:26] Speaker 1: So just trying to keep things as normal as possible
[20:29] Speaker 1: until the world hopefully goes back to the way it was.
[20:33] Speaker 1: And also look to the future. Is that what Anne's
[20:36] Speaker 1: diary is about to you? Is it also about looking
[20:39] Speaker 1: to the future and trying to envisions the world where
[20:42] Speaker 1: there is some hope, there's visions of hope, I think.
[20:44] Speaker 1: But you have to consider also, as I mentioned earlier,
[20:47] Speaker 1: her manuscript, what you all wrote and scribbled. It's a
[20:51] Speaker 1: large spile of paper. It's not just one volume as
[20:54] Speaker 1: a book. So when she starts out writing a diary
[20:57] Speaker 1: that's even a couple of weeks before she is hiding.
[21:00] Speaker 1: She starts on her thirteen birthday, when she's still at home.
[21:03] Speaker 1: And when she starts off as a just thirteen year old,
[21:06] Speaker 1: you read the writing of a thirteen year old. She
[21:09] Speaker 1: just knows this, going from this to that, and it's
[21:11] Speaker 1: about things that she liked, and you see her mature,
[21:16] Speaker 1: you see your sort of intellectual development there as well.
[21:20] Speaker 1: At a later stage in time, she's going to rework
[21:22] Speaker 1: all her writing, all her notes into something that she
[21:27] Speaker 1: wants to be a novel about her experiences in hiding.
[21:31] Speaker 1: That's after she hears from the Dutch government in London,
[21:35] Speaker 1: the Secretary of Education and Sciences I think he's called
[21:38] Speaker 1: in the exiled a government in London from the Netherlands
[21:42] Speaker 1: on the radio, the illegal radio, and he says to
[21:45] Speaker 1: the people in the Netherlands, keep your notebooks, skip your calendars,
[21:49] Speaker 1: if there's a sermon from a pretuer or a priest,
[21:52] Speaker 1: just keep that so we can document how daily life,
[21:56] Speaker 1: how the experiences of the populations were during the occupations.
[22:00] Speaker 1: And she hears that that's good. I'm going to do that.
[22:03] Speaker 1: I'm going to write a novel about what I've experienced,
[22:07] Speaker 1: and so she starts writing that novel. Well, at a
[22:09] Speaker 1: later stage in nineteen forty four, when she is a
[22:12] Speaker 1: bit older and she has matured a bit and her
[22:14] Speaker 1: writing skills are more developed. So that's when you see that, well,
[22:18] Speaker 1: the talent, basically, the talent for writing and also for
[22:21] Speaker 1: a journalistic approach comes to light. And it's from those
[22:24] Speaker 1: chapters that's basically the diary as we know it from
[22:27] Speaker 1: the bookstores is compiled. Cautionary Tales will return with the
[22:31] Speaker 1: Warfare Podcast in just a moment, Tim Halford here you're
[22:38] Speaker 1: listening to the Warfare Podcast, proudly presented by Cautionary Tales.
[22:43] Speaker 1: And of course, as we move through nineteen forty four
[22:46] Speaker 1: and up until that infamous date in history, August fourth,
[22:51] Speaker 1: we see that Anne is still writing that diary. But
[22:55] Speaker 1: do we know and this is of course quite a
[22:57] Speaker 1: contentious and controversial question, but do we know how they
[23:01] Speaker 1: were discovered or why they were discovered, particularly on that
[23:04] Speaker 1: date on August fourth, nineteen forty four. There's been lots
[23:07] Speaker 1: of reports recently around this traitor theory. Is a much
[23:11] Speaker 1: accuracy in that or do we just not quite know
[23:15] Speaker 1: exactly what happened here? Well, one of the research topics
[23:18] Speaker 1: that I've been over the years I told you about
[23:22] Speaker 1: is in particular that while are the circumstances of that
[23:25] Speaker 1: arrest in my belief for the focus is just very arbitrary.
[23:29] Speaker 1: But I brought out a research paper in twenty sixteen
[23:32] Speaker 1: because over time the general idea of the front came
[23:35] Speaker 1: back in anotherrance in nineteen forty five, and he does
[23:37] Speaker 1: we were betrayed by someone and we've got to find
[23:39] Speaker 1: out who. But there was an investigation. It was even
[23:43] Speaker 1: a court case against the not knowing warehousemen. You know,
[23:46] Speaker 1: there's the second warehouse men that we just discussed. He
[23:49] Speaker 1: was acquitted because there was no evidence against him. In
[23:52] Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, there was a new investigation after Vicenthal
[23:55] Speaker 1: had found the SS officer who was present at the arrest,
[24:00] Speaker 1: and the general assumption is that someone made a treacherous
[24:05] Speaker 1: phone call to the German authorities at the time, and
[24:07] Speaker 1: in my investigative sixteen I have shown that that is
[24:12] Speaker 1: just an assumption and there's no evidence for that. A
[24:14] Speaker 1: lot of people think, well, Batman said twenty years after
[24:17] Speaker 1: the fact, that there was a phone call made that morning,
[24:20] Speaker 1: and so that must be true. However, the man himself
[24:23] Speaker 1: says in his nineteen sixty three statement, one of the
[24:26] Speaker 1: first things that he said is, if my memory serves me, well,
[24:29] Speaker 1: there was a phone call calling in that morning. So
[24:32] Speaker 1: he is not certain. But for a lot of people
[24:34] Speaker 1: they took that as evidence and that led to, especially
[24:38] Speaker 1: over the last thirty years, I think a wild goose
[24:40] Speaker 1: Chase roommate that phone call, and I think I've shown
[24:44] Speaker 1: in my investigative report that that phone call is not
[24:47] Speaker 1: certain at all in the first place. And there's other
[24:50] Speaker 1: avenues of thinking about scenarios that have led to the
[24:54] Speaker 1: visiting of a Dutch and German policeman on that day.
[24:58] Speaker 1: For instance, you also pointed out that the supply of
[25:01] Speaker 1: foods was a large problem in this cause, you know,
[25:04] Speaker 1: people hiding, people are cut off from the civil society.
[25:07] Speaker 1: Food supplies are over seen, supervised and distributed by the authorities,
[25:13] Speaker 1: and strictly regulated. So if you're off the grid, if
[25:16] Speaker 1: you don't have ties with the civic administration anymore, so
[25:19] Speaker 1: you have to be fraudulent to get food, you have
[25:22] Speaker 1: to be fraudulent to be supplied, so you make yourself
[25:25] Speaker 1: vulnerable to all sorts of detection. And what's this investigation
[25:30] Speaker 1: of the former FBI man and his team has grossly
[25:34] Speaker 1: neglected and willfully I believe overlooked, is that earlier in
[25:39] Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, already two people from the company in
[25:42] Speaker 1: that building were arrested for fraudulent trading of food coupons.
[25:47] Speaker 1: So German authorities had already sniffed on the building and
[25:51] Speaker 1: sniffed on the company in there a couple of months
[25:53] Speaker 1: prior to that rate. And there's no proof at this
[25:57] Speaker 1: moment that I know that there is a connection between
[25:59] Speaker 1: those two events, but I don't think it's very far
[26:02] Speaker 1: fast to assume that. I think it's very light headed
[26:06] Speaker 1: of the Rosemary Sullivan book to just plainly ignore it
[26:09] Speaker 1: at And I think that's because they want to point
[26:11] Speaker 1: out the corporate in a scenario where there's no corporate
[26:14] Speaker 1: but they were merely accidentally caught up in the police
[26:18] Speaker 1: investigation totally unrelated to their presence, just don't serve that purpose.
[26:22] Speaker 1: So is it more practical than that? And of course
[26:25] Speaker 1: those who want to find a culprit don't want to
[26:28] Speaker 1: deal in the more basic and I suppose boring practicalities
[26:32] Speaker 1: of these things. But could we go as start to
[26:34] Speaker 1: say it was? It was almost inevitable in this case
[26:37] Speaker 1: because when you are trying to feed so many people,
[26:40] Speaker 1: and as we said, as the screws are being tightened
[26:42] Speaker 1: on all levels of society, as rationing is getting harder,
[26:46] Speaker 1: as it becomes more difficult for people to live withinside
[26:48] Speaker 1: the system, let alone outside it, there would have been
[26:52] Speaker 1: something that flashed up, something that would have given them away.
[26:55] Speaker 1: That's exactly it. And so my thesis is, although not
[26:59] Speaker 1: to be proven until yet, that the company Hissenko was
[27:03] Speaker 1: under screwed ay from the authorities because their salesman had
[27:06] Speaker 1: been proven to be fraudulent, one of them even convicted
[27:09] Speaker 1: for other nineteen forty four. So it's not far fetched.
[27:12] Speaker 1: There was a detective unit, a nationwide working detective unit
[27:16] Speaker 1: that specialized in this sort of fraud, and they've been
[27:21] Speaker 1: searching places all over the country and it's more than
[27:23] Speaker 1: once that they came across Jews hiding there as well.
[27:27] Speaker 1: They weren't looking for them. They were looking for people
[27:30] Speaker 1: that were slaughtering livestock or illegally, people that were trading
[27:33] Speaker 1: in food coup people that were fraudulent with food rations.
[27:37] Speaker 1: So I guess there's a good chance that has happened,
[27:40] Speaker 1: and not a lot of people in the nettles realizes
[27:43] Speaker 1: that that was a big danger for hidden Jews as well.
[27:47] Speaker 1: The general idea is for you hide somewhere in an
[27:49] Speaker 1: ethic or in the basement or in the back room,
[27:51] Speaker 1: and you hope that the neighbors won't give you away.
[27:54] Speaker 1: But there's a lot of more things that are jeopardizing
[27:57] Speaker 1: your secret presence anywhere. Well, I suppose that this is
[28:00] Speaker 1: all but one side of the story, because no matter
[28:03] Speaker 1: how they were discovered, it sets into action a series
[28:07] Speaker 1: of tragic vents from that August date in forty four.
[28:12] Speaker 1: So tell us what happened to the Frank family. Where
[28:15] Speaker 1: were they taken upon being discovered. Yes, it's a good
[28:19] Speaker 1: point that you made before the outcome. It doesn't matter
[28:22] Speaker 1: whether it betrayed or found by coincidence. The outcome is
[28:26] Speaker 1: still the same. So what happened for them. Is that
[28:28] Speaker 1: they were taken to a German bureau where they were
[28:31] Speaker 1: briefly interrogated and then brought to a remanked prison right
[28:36] Speaker 1: in the middle of Umstergum. There they were locked up
[28:38] Speaker 1: with other Jews that were arrested recently. So that's what
[28:41] Speaker 1: they did at the time. They had a sort of
[28:44] Speaker 1: holding facility there and they would hold the people in
[28:46] Speaker 1: there and once they had a number of seventy or
[28:49] Speaker 1: eighty or so, they would take them to the transit
[28:51] Speaker 1: camp Westerbourg in the north northeast of the country. So
[28:54] Speaker 1: there was a concentration camp or a trensit camp as
[28:57] Speaker 1: it was called, where where the Jewish population of the
[28:59] Speaker 1: Netherlands was brought over time bit by bit, and from
[29:02] Speaker 1: where the deportation strains left. And so they arrived there
[29:06] Speaker 1: in August eighth, nineteen forty four, four days of being arrested,
[29:10] Speaker 1: and on September three, just a couple of weeks later,
[29:13] Speaker 1: they were taking in the train with the profitabial cattle
[29:16] Speaker 1: cars to Auschwitz. They were on the last train to
[29:18] Speaker 1: leave the Netherlands for Auswitch. The last train to leave
[29:22] Speaker 1: the Netherlands for Auschwitz. Now that is a powerful sentence
[29:26] Speaker 1: what happened to all of those who were found After
[29:30] Speaker 1: that train had left, they were brought to invest Bordock
[29:32] Speaker 1: as well, and there were people left behind invest Borck
[29:35] Speaker 1: as well. And the next day, on September four, there
[29:39] Speaker 1: was also our train leaving, but they didn't go to Auschwitz,
[29:42] Speaker 1: but to tradition, starts in what now is Czechia, the
[29:45] Speaker 1: Czech Republic, and that wasn't exactly walk in the park,
[29:49] Speaker 1: but Elway was different from Auschwitz. So there were a
[29:52] Speaker 1: lot of people left behind Investor Bork and it was
[29:55] Speaker 1: liberated by I think the Canadians or the Poles in
[29:58] Speaker 1: April nineteen forty five, so they found I think about
[30:02] Speaker 1: eight or nine hundred people still alive there. So we
[30:06] Speaker 1: know that the Frank family are taken off to Auschwitz.
[30:09] Speaker 1: Do we know much about their time there, what life
[30:12] Speaker 1: was like for Otto, for Anna and for the rest
[30:15] Speaker 1: of the family. Well, Otto Frank is the only one
[30:17] Speaker 1: who is a five to live to tell the tale,
[30:20] Speaker 1: but we do know a few things about them. There
[30:22] Speaker 1: was other people that have survived now which have seen
[30:24] Speaker 1: them there as well. I'd have met them there as well,
[30:26] Speaker 1: so they can tell quite a few things about that. Well.
[30:30] Speaker 1: At first at a rifle at Birkenau at the Rumper.
[30:33] Speaker 1: So I'll just gets a well known picture with their
[30:35] Speaker 1: watchtower and the trains coming down. And the first thing
[30:38] Speaker 1: that happens is that men and women are separated. So
[30:41] Speaker 1: Otto Frank was separated from his wife and daughters, Herman
[30:44] Speaker 1: van Pels was and his son was separated from their
[30:48] Speaker 1: wife and mother. And Fritz Peffort, being on his own
[30:52] Speaker 1: from this little group, was with the other men. Of course,
[30:55] Speaker 1: So the women remained in birken now and the men
[30:58] Speaker 1: were marched, after being tattooed and shaven, and all that
[31:01] Speaker 1: marched to what's called the stam Lager Auschwitz one and
[31:05] Speaker 1: they were set to work. They had to dig gravel
[31:07] Speaker 1: from a river and make roads, sort of that that
[31:10] Speaker 1: hard labor had. One from Bells was the first one
[31:13] Speaker 1: I think to die. So he injured his hand during
[31:17] Speaker 1: work and he asked to be relieved or work for
[31:20] Speaker 1: some days, and he was grumped that relieved. But then
[31:23] Speaker 1: the risk that you run then is that you're just
[31:25] Speaker 1: at the barracks being useless. In every couple of weeks
[31:28] Speaker 1: all those useless people were round up and murdered, and
[31:31] Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how and went, but somewhere early
[31:35] Speaker 1: October he must have died, and he's probably guessed with
[31:37] Speaker 1: a lot of other people. His son survived until January
[31:42] Speaker 1: when the dead marches started from Auschwitz, so everyone who
[31:47] Speaker 1: could walk was forced to walk, and he was taken
[31:52] Speaker 1: fifty kilometers or so and put on a train and
[31:55] Speaker 1: ended up in Mauthausen in Austria, and that's where he died,
[31:59] Speaker 1: totally exhausted and malnourished. Around the day of liberation actually
[32:03] Speaker 1: in May nineteen forty five, Americans were already on the threshold,
[32:07] Speaker 1: but not too late for him. It's Prefet was a dentist,
[32:10] Speaker 1: and he left Auschwitz with a bit of a mystery still,
[32:14] Speaker 1: but with a group of auto medical professionals at least
[32:17] Speaker 1: twenty or so. We don't know for what purpose. But
[32:19] Speaker 1: he ended up in the no Incomic camp near Hamburg,
[32:22] Speaker 1: and that's where he died of andro colitis in December
[32:26] Speaker 1: nineteen forty four already and then the women in Birkenal
[32:31] Speaker 1: aid it from died on early January nineteen forty five.
[32:35] Speaker 1: There's a witness, a friend that she made that had witnessed,
[32:38] Speaker 1: that had taught that to the front. Later on she
[32:41] Speaker 1: did survive, and in November forty four already she was
[32:44] Speaker 1: separated from her daughters because at that point the Nazis
[32:48] Speaker 1: started to move large numbers of women, Dutch and French
[32:54] Speaker 1: mainly and some Hungarians from outswitch back into Germany proper
[32:59] Speaker 1: to a camp where they could just at all along,
[33:03] Speaker 1: as the German words, it just get fixed up a
[33:06] Speaker 1: little bit, because they were still fit enough to work
[33:09] Speaker 1: in the war industry. All the german Men were fighting
[33:12] Speaker 1: on the front at that time, and the factory should
[33:15] Speaker 1: still be running because the war and effort was tremendous,
[33:18] Speaker 1: so these women were to put it to work in
[33:20] Speaker 1: all those factories had aided. Frank was not fit enough
[33:24] Speaker 1: to go with them, so the girls were separated from her.
[33:27] Speaker 1: She stayed behind the aushoots and she with it a
[33:30] Speaker 1: way I guess there is she was here and mel
[33:32] Speaker 1: nourrised as well and died. So then missus van Bells
[33:36] Speaker 1: and the girls on Maho they were moved to beerhan Belsen.
[33:39] Speaker 1: There was the camp where they should have been patched
[33:41] Speaker 1: up a little bit and then distributed over all the
[33:44] Speaker 1: parts of Germany to set to work. But the front
[33:46] Speaker 1: lines kept shifting and shifting, and one railway line after
[33:49] Speaker 1: another was cut off, and so that whole idea didn't
[33:52] Speaker 1: work out that very well in the end, and that's
[33:55] Speaker 1: why benhan Belson wasn't by early nineteen forty five sort
[33:59] Speaker 1: of warehouse overcrowded with ten thousands of people who had
[34:04] Speaker 1: no food, no healthcare and hanging about to die, basically
[34:08] Speaker 1: lots of them, and only missus vampells to be complete.
[34:13] Speaker 1: She was put on the train and put to work
[34:15] Speaker 1: in a little factory near Deathsau And after a couple
[34:18] Speaker 1: of weeks she and a lot of other women were
[34:21] Speaker 1: moved further towards the sat racing starting the now Czech
[34:25] Speaker 1: Republic again, and she died on the way. There's people
[34:28] Speaker 1: have been people testimony that she died on that train
[34:32] Speaker 1: and they left her behind by the tracks during one
[34:34] Speaker 1: of the stops. Had Anna Markot, as we well know,
[34:37] Speaker 1: somewhere in February contracted Tye Ford fever and transmitted by
[34:43] Speaker 1: vice in clothing, in Hewart's clothing, and thousands of thousands
[34:47] Speaker 1: of people in backam bells and died of that cause.
[34:50] Speaker 1: And they did too. Otto Frank in the end, he
[34:54] Speaker 1: was in the sick Bay in Auschwitz, where he luckily survived.
[34:58] Speaker 1: Being in the sit bay was a bit of a
[35:00] Speaker 1: death sentence really, but a couple of hundreds that did
[35:03] Speaker 1: survive that, and they were liberated by the Russians Sophiet army,
[35:08] Speaker 1: I should say, they were craniums and all sorts of
[35:10] Speaker 1: Selfiet soldiers in dead army and deliberated the camp and
[35:13] Speaker 1: death was how you were saved. And you mentioned bergen Belson,
[35:17] Speaker 1: of course, which was liberated by the British on the
[35:20] Speaker 1: fifteenth of April forty five. And like you say, I
[35:22] Speaker 1: mean the scenes, they're thousands of bodies lay and buried
[35:27] Speaker 1: around the camp. What's sixty seventy thousand people starving, mortally ill,
[35:33] Speaker 1: packed together without food, water, basic sanitation, suffering from various
[35:38] Speaker 1: different types of diseases, typhus, dysentery. I mean, truly a terrible,
[35:44] Speaker 1: terrible place to be and highlights the stark reality of
[35:48] Speaker 1: the end of the war and of the Holocaust. And
[35:52] Speaker 1: you mentioned that Otto is the only one to survive.
[35:56] Speaker 1: How did it come to be that we're able to
[36:00] Speaker 1: talk about this today, that we're able to hear about
[36:03] Speaker 1: the Frank story, that we're able to read A's diary, Yes,
[36:08] Speaker 1: with the he was left behind at the arrests and
[36:12] Speaker 1: scattered all over the floor of that paper. That is
[36:14] Speaker 1: a well known story that the German officer present at
[36:17] Speaker 1: the scene he needed something to put the valuables that
[36:20] Speaker 1: he confiscated in, and Otto Frank kept his daughter's papers
[36:25] Speaker 1: in his briefcase during the night, so he scattered around
[36:28] Speaker 1: around the floor to put the valuables in. And the helpers,
[36:31] Speaker 1: the office staff, the women that were not arrested that day,
[36:35] Speaker 1: they picked up all those papers in the days after,
[36:37] Speaker 1: and they kept it to give it back to Anna
[36:39] Speaker 1: when she would come back. Well, she didn't, but then
[36:42] Speaker 1: Otto did. And when it was clear that Otto was
[36:45] Speaker 1: the only one and all the others had died, they
[36:47] Speaker 1: handed over all the paperwork to him. So Otto Frank
[36:51] Speaker 1: took that and it took him a while before he
[36:53] Speaker 1: could set himself to actually reading it, a couple of
[36:55] Speaker 1: months actually, to the end of nineteen forty five. And
[36:58] Speaker 1: when he started reading it, and he somehow found out
[37:01] Speaker 1: that she parts of that book he had intended for publication.
[37:05] Speaker 1: There was her dream. She wanted to be a writer
[37:07] Speaker 1: and a journalist, and she wanted to published that book,
[37:10] Speaker 1: So that gave him the thought, I think, and I
[37:12] Speaker 1: think it's fair to say that it was for him
[37:14] Speaker 1: the sense of purpose again. So his family gone, his
[37:17] Speaker 1: social circle gone, his daughters, his wife, his business down
[37:22] Speaker 1: on the ground, and he had to rebuild. He sort
[37:23] Speaker 1: of reinvent himself and rebuilding whole life and having that
[37:29] Speaker 1: book and the ideals that well, he says, I want
[37:33] Speaker 1: to spread my daughter's ideals. I don't know exactly, to
[37:36] Speaker 1: be honest, what those ideals or but there is something
[37:39] Speaker 1: about hoping about reconciliation, that we should be good and
[37:42] Speaker 1: people should be good for each other, and we should
[37:44] Speaker 1: build a better world as a general idea. I think
[37:47] Speaker 1: that's the ideals that he mentioned, and he worked for that.
[37:50] Speaker 1: So he found a new purpose in life in the
[37:54] Speaker 1: idea of reconciliation. Bring back the youths of all corners
[37:58] Speaker 1: of the world and bring them together and let them
[38:00] Speaker 1: talk and let them meet each other, let them get
[38:02] Speaker 1: to know each order, so we can avoid this sort
[38:05] Speaker 1: of calamities and disasters in the future. I think we
[38:09] Speaker 1: look at the world today that wasn't very successful, but
[38:12] Speaker 1: still the idea is good. And after the diary became
[38:17] Speaker 1: a success in particularly in the United States, so it's
[38:20] Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. It was quite a success as well.
[38:22] Speaker 1: The first he was first printed in June nineteen forty
[38:25] Speaker 1: five and the second print was already in December, so
[38:27] Speaker 1: there was a lot of public interest I think for
[38:30] Speaker 1: the book, but it really two wins in the United States,
[38:34] Speaker 1: and then there was a stage play in the US
[38:36] Speaker 1: and it was a film made by George Stevens in
[38:39] Speaker 1: the US, so there was international acclaim and international interest
[38:43] Speaker 1: as well. And when the interest for his daughter's diary
[38:46] Speaker 1: grew internationally, he had the idea also of maintaining the
[38:50] Speaker 1: building where it had all happened. It was a derelict building,
[38:54] Speaker 1: it was always collapsing, so he took initiatives to preserve
[38:58] Speaker 1: that building and to do it up again and made
[39:02] Speaker 1: that all those meetings, that's where the youth from the
[39:05] Speaker 1: world could meet, that should be in that place in
[39:07] Speaker 1: his opinion, and that's he worked for and that's what
[39:11] Speaker 1: he actually realized as well. In the nineteen sixties, when
[39:14] Speaker 1: the Anna franc House was just open for the public,
[39:16] Speaker 1: it was every year. There was also a youth center
[39:19] Speaker 1: connected to it, and every year from nineteen sixty sixty
[39:23] Speaker 1: one sixty the seventies or so, there were annual youth conferences,
[39:27] Speaker 1: just students coming from all over the world and discussing
[39:29] Speaker 1: all sorts of things, a bad fight in South Africa,
[39:32] Speaker 1: the civil rights moving in the US, the Vietnam War,
[39:36] Speaker 1: all sorts of topics that people discuss. They want to
[39:39] Speaker 1: make the world a better place. So I think that's
[39:42] Speaker 1: why we can still visit that to day, and that's
[39:45] Speaker 1: exactly where Anne's message lives on, that push for hope
[39:49] Speaker 1: and reconciliation around the world, although as we hear on
[39:53] Speaker 1: this podcast all too often, it's very very difficult to
[39:57] Speaker 1: achieve in reality, it seems, but we need those spaces
[40:02] Speaker 1: just like the Anne Frank House where those discussions can
[40:05] Speaker 1: take place. Gerten, thank you so much for your time
[40:08] Speaker 1: and for coming on the pub cast today. Please tell
[40:10] Speaker 1: us about where people can read more of your work
[40:13] Speaker 1: and how they can engage in the work of the
[40:16] Speaker 1: Anne Frank House. The best way to go well is
[40:19] Speaker 1: go to the website on a franc dot org. You
[40:22] Speaker 1: can all find all sorts of information of the activities
[40:25] Speaker 1: of the Other Frank House, and there's also in that
[40:29] Speaker 1: you can find you can look for the research various
[40:32] Speaker 1: research report that I wrote or that some of my
[40:34] Speaker 1: colleagues wrote. You can find an investigative report about the arrests.
[40:39] Speaker 1: You can find an article that I go authored with
[40:42] Speaker 1: an American colleague about the immigration attempt into the US.
[40:46] Speaker 1: You can find all sorts of information there and also
[40:49] Speaker 1: thinks you can possibly do yourself well. Gerton, thank you
[40:52] Speaker 1: so much for your time today, and if you'll continued
[40:54] Speaker 1: research on this topic, you're always welcome on the Warfare podcast.
[40:59] Speaker 1: Thank you as my pleasure. That was James Rodgers, host
[41:02] Speaker 1: of the Warfare Podcast. If you liked it, you know
[41:05] Speaker 1: what to do and Cautionary Tales will return next week

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